


A lost boy

by Anathema Device (notowned)



Category: The Musketeers (2014)
Genre: Gen, Illness, Post-Season/Series 03, bereavement
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-18
Updated: 2018-01-18
Packaged: 2019-03-06 10:34:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,215
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13409418
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notowned/pseuds/Anathema%20Device
Summary: Athos encounters a child while ill.





	A lost boy

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by a conversation with Thimblerig a little while ago. This is not what she asked for.

_StopstopstopstopstopstopstopstopstopstopSTOP_

The sword though his skull won’t let him move. He has to move. The heat. He burns. His body. Won’t move. 

The sword slides back and forth until he wants to scream but.

Water. Just a drop.

Why does it hurt?

His back. Like it is a iron gate. Rusted shut. Every move _screeches_.

When did he stand? Water in his eyes. No water in his throat. He needs.

Step. Step. Feet dragging. The sword is a burning circlet too tight for his head. 

He is cold. He burns. 

He keeps walking.

*

A child. A boy. In the dust. Bright and painful.

_Water_

The boy shakes his head.

_Help me_

“Come.”

The boy is walking. He follows. Step. Step.

_Water_

_I’m dying_

_Where am I_

The boy turns but does not speak. 

_Rage. Pain._

_I’m burning._

*

Shade. The sun is gone. It is a church. The boy waits.

_Water_

He is cold. He shivers suddenly. Holding himself tight. So cold. His shirt is wet.

_Help me_

“Come.”

They are outside. Graves. He knows this place.

There is a grave. Inside there is a bed.

“You can rest. No one will hurt you.”

The bed is soft. He is cold. The boy is in his arms. The boy is warm. Small. Only a baby.

“It was so lonely here.”

He pats the baby’s back. He knows the child.

_Who are you?_

“Raoul, Papa.”

He is warm. The baby is small.

He shivers. The grave is cold now. He feels snow on his face. In his eyes. 

He shivers. The baby is gone. Raoul is gone.

The soil falls. He will die here.

“Papa! Papa!”

He turns to the child. She is far away.

“Papa!”

So cold. His back grates.

The soil is gone. The sky is grey.

“Papa!”

“Shhh, Ninon. Let him sleep.”

He reaches up. He is outside the grave. He is alone.

“Papa!”

*

“Papa?”

“Athos, are you awake?”

He is not cold any more, but his body aches like the devil.

“Athos?”

His eyelids are gummed shut. A gentle touch on his face, then a damp cloth wipes his face and he can open his eyes at least. “S’vie.”

“Thank God.”

His wife is holding their little girl. Ninon wants to come to him, so he holds out his hand and she runs over and hugs him. “I was so worried, Papa.”

He pets her dark curls, and looks at Sylvie over Ninon’s head. “[Tertian fever](https://emedicine.medscape.com/article/221134-clinical),” she says, answering his unspoken question.

He is drenched in sweat, his body aches like Porthos has been beating him up again at hand to hand, and Sylvie’s relief is all he needs to know how bad it was this time. He lifts his hand and beckons to her. She comes and sits by him, and the three of them huddle together, his head against her rounded belly. Ninon babbles happily, the resilience of a five-year-old who no longer has to worry her papa won’t wake up.

It takes him a few days to get back to normal. He has work to do even so, though he is forced to leave much more than he would normally do to Irène and Martin. Thank God they had enough training now to run the press on their own for a few days, or Sylvie would have had to close the shop while he was ill.

On the sixth day, a messenger comes with a letter from Aramis—addressed to Sylvie. “Something I should know, my love?” he teases.

She taps him on the head with the letter—more like a little parcel—in rebuke, before breaking the seal. A little packet falls out. “Oh, it’s the Jesuit bark.” Athos raises an eyebrow in question. “I sent an urgent note as soon as you fell ill, begging him for anything he knew to help. I remember him mentioning [Jesuit bark ](http://www.scientus.org/Jesuits-Bark.html)the last time you had an attack. The pope sent a supply to her majesty.” She read the letter. “He says it tastes appalling, but it will help, and urges you to take it.”

“I’ll try anything to avoid another attack like this last one.”

She comes to him and he holds her close. “He also says to take your time recovering properly, and not to worry about your reports.”

It’s two weeks before he can bring himself to tell her of the fever dream, though he can’t get it out of his mind. Every time he looks at her, and her belly, and thinks of how they had hoped for a boy last time too.

“I saw Raoul,” he tells her one night, when he is finally able to push the words past his teeth. 

“In your fever?”

He nods against her hair. They are wrapped around each other like children. They’ve slept that way almost from the start. He always needs to have a hand on her at the least. Preferably a leg and his body too. He could never have enough of her, her skin, her scent, the feel of her moulding against him. Or him against her.

“He was Ninon’s age. I didn’t recognise him. He told me who he was.”

She hums a little. He can’t tell if this is distressing her. “Do you want to know more?”

“If you want to tell me. It’s been bothering you, hasn’t it?”

“Yes. He said he was lonely in the grave. I—” His voice dried up.

She turned so she could kiss him. “It was a dream, Athos. Less than a dream. Your ill mind being tormented by malaria. It wasn't real.”

“I can’t stop thinking of him. Cold, in the ground.” Despite himself, his eyes grew wet. He hadn’t cried when the baby had died, just days after being born. It snowed the day they buried him. Sylvie had been inconsolable. He’d had to be strong for her.

But sometimes, when he was alone, he cried for the son they had lost.

“He’s not there,” she said. “He’s with God. I don’t care what the church thinks. He was innocent, and loved, and if he’s anywhere, he’s in God’s care. It wasn’t real, darling.”

He can’t help himself. He puts his hand on her stomach, hoping the baby will move under his touch. Still months to go, and even if they both survive the birth, will the child live? So many didn’t.

“Sometimes I think, ‘oh, he’d be three now’. I remember Thomas at three years old. And I miss him.”

_Both of them._

“So do I,” she says with a little snuffle. It’s not just him on the verge of weeping. “But these things happen. We hope this one will be strong and live, but Raoul will always....”

“He'll always be our first son.” He broke down and she held him as she sobbed too.

“It doesn’t mean anything,” she said, gulping back tears.. “He’s not lonely. He’s in our hearts. I won’t ever forget him.”

“No. I’m sorry, darling.”

“Don’t, Athos. Just hold me.”

So he did. At times like this, he desperately wanted to talk to Aramis. This area was his speciality. It wasn’t right that his grieving, pregnant, anxious Sylvie should carry the burden of Athos’s sorrow too.

He swore not to mention it again.

But he would not forget.

_Raoul, Papa._

**Author's Note:**

> ["In the eighteenth century in France, almost one baby in three died before the age of one, most often from infectious disease."](https://www.ined.fr/en/everything_about_population/demographic-facts-sheets/focus-on/infant_mortality_france/)
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> [ "Demographers estimate that approximately 2% of all live births in England at this time would die in the first day of life. By the end of the first week, a cumulative total of 5% would die. Another 3 or 4% would die within the month. A total of 12 or 13% would die within their first year. With the hazards of infancy behind them, the death rate for children slowed but continued to occur. A cumulative total of 36% of children died before the age of six, and another 24% between the ages of seven and sixteen. In all, of 100 live births, 60 would die before the age of 16."](http://amechanicalart.blogspot.com.au/2013/09/infant-mortality-then-and-now.html)


End file.
